Mike Faricy: Bombshell

I looked at the pile of job applications I had yet to verify. I stared at the dart board hanging on the wall, two darts imbedded in the wall about three inches to the right. The mail man had already come and gone, nothing for me except a grocery store circular, again.

“In two days? I could probably adjust some things. I’d have to make a couple of phone calls, but I’ll just put them off and reschedule.”

“You sure? I mean we were hoping we could sit down with you tonight, go over some stuff. I’m sorry this is all coming so fast.”

“Tonight? I think that could work, I’ll make it work. You tell me where and when, let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you this afternoon if there’s a problem.”

“You sure? I don’t want to…”

“Justine, I’m moving you up to the top of the list. Can I call you back this afternoon?”

“I really appreciate it, thanks Dev,” she said and hung up.

I wandered over to The Spot for a liquid lunch.

There were five of them sitting around the table when I arrived, teammates from the Bombshells having a beer. Not a Cosmopolitan in sight. Justine introduced them using their Roller Derby names.

“Helen Killer, Maiden Bed, Brandi Manhattan and Cheatin Hart,” she said.

Each woman nodded at me as Justine pointed. They were all attractive, very attractive. I had the feeling I was about to land the cakewalk job of all time.

“Nice to meet you, ladies. Justine, I don’t think you ever told me your Derby name.”

“Spankie,” a chorus trumpeted back.

“Really? Ladies, just call me Dev. So, Justine, I mean Spankie, mentioned you had a need for my services.”

“We’ve got the Hasting Hustlers coming in Thursday and there have been problems wherever they go.”

“Hastings, you mean the town eight miles downriver from St. Paul?” I asked.

“No, not really. More like the town in England, where the Battle of Hastings took place in ten-sixty-six, Harold the Second and William of Normandy. It changed British History, well and the rest of Western Europe.”

I think it was Maiden Bed who just gave me the school lesson, but maybe I was mixing her up with Cheatin Hart. I suddenly couldn’t remember names, well, except for Spankie.

“Define ‘problems wherever they go’,” I said, thinking some sexy creature with a nickname like Nasty Nicki or Lotta Luv and I was going to get paid to watch them while they showered.

“Their big name star is Harlotte Davidson,” Helen Killer said. I remembered her name because she was the first girl introduced to me.

“Big draw,” someone said.

“Huge,” one of the other girls added.

“We’re lucky to get them in here. It’ll just about make our year with this one bout. Anyway, one of the things they require in the contract is security.”

“Security?” I asked, thinking it might make a lot of sense to be with her in the shower room.

“She’s had some sort of stalker after her for almost a year, now.”

“Stalker?” I said.

Nods all around the table.

“What does he do, hang around in the hotel? Try and get into the locker room and leave her love letters or take naked photos?”

“If only,” Justine said.

“Spankie?” I asked.

She shook her head then seemed to shudder almost imperceptibly.

“Well, he mailed a couple of fingers.”

“Fingers?” I half shouted.

“Then you guys remember, he slipped that one under her door?” I think Brandi Manhattan said that.

“That was down in Chicago,” Justine added.

“Has anyone contacted the police?”

“Here?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, we got the usual, we can pay one of their off duty guys to hang around outside the door, that sort of stuff. They said they’ll keep an eye out, but there isn’t much they can do. I mean most of it has come through the mail. Not like there was a return address you could drive over to and ask some jerk what the hell he was thinking.”

“Except for Chicago, when it was slipped under the door.”

“Fingers?” I asked, again.

“Yeah, and always the middle one, like he’s giving her the finger or something.”

“Creepy,” Helen Killer chimed in.

“Does she have security? Someone with the team, that sort of deal.”

“Yeah, but they want us to provide someone local. I mean I get it, it makes sense. Their guy can watch Harlotte, he’ll know the practice routine, the hotel, all that sort of stuff, but he’s not a local guy.”

I was still stuck a few paces back thinking fingers? What the hell?

“Fingers, and always the middle one?”

Nods all around.

“This happened more than twice?”

More nods.

“I think two through the mail, then Chicago,” Justine said.

“So I’d just follow her around, with the Hustlers’ security, that it?”

“Maybe, you tell us, you’re the Private Investigator. What would you normally do?”

“I’d just follow her around, with the Hustlers’ security.” I detected a slight widening of their eyes so I embellished. “Work as the local interface with the police. I know most of the players on the force. Talk to the Hastings Hustler’s security about what they’ve been doing thus far. Find out what they’re worried about, deal with any of their immediate concerns.”

“Worried about? They’re worried about some nut case sending human fingers through the mail and finally getting bold enough to slip one under the door. I mean right under the damn door, that’s what they’re worried about.”

“Yeah, I get that. But are they worried the same guy is going to take a shot at her during the bout. Where do you skate? Are there metal detectors? Is this finger deal just centered on their star attraction, Harlotte? Or, have her teammates received threatening letters or phone calls, too. Look, we can sit here all night and go over what we might do, might not do and at the end of the night we could be completely wrong,” I said.

“So now what?” Justine asked.

“I’d like to contact these people, talk to them before they arrive, maybe get some things lined up in advance. The better prepared we are the better off everyone will be. You got a phone number where I could reach them?”

“I can have that information for you tomorrow morning,” Justine said.

Her condo was on the fourth floor of a five story building. A red brick Victorian sort of thing with gargoyles, black trim, stain glass and gables, built in eighteen-eighty. It was the perfect place for a Halloween party.

“You want a beer or something stronger?” Justine asked.

She kicked off her shoes at the door, tossed her purse on a black leather couch one of two sitting perpendicular to a fireplace, there was a glass topped coffee table between them. The room was long with a three panel bay window at the far end and a stain glass window above that in some kind of flower pattern. The streets light from four stories down cast colored reflections across her living room ceiling.

“Beer’s just fine for me.”

A hallway ran straight ahead along the length of the condo, exposed brick on one side and doors to various rooms on the other. Track lighting along the ceiling lit the hall and highlighted three framed paintings hung on the brick wall. The paintings were roller derby scenes. Girls skating around a banked track wearing hot pants, you could feel a sense of speed and action just by looking at the things, the paintings.

“You do these?” I asked, staring briefly at the paintings before following her into the kitchen at the far back end of the hall.

“No, some California guy. That’s me in them, in the purple jersey. He did ten of the things if you can believe it, gave me a deal. He had a show and everything, I guess it went pretty well.” Her voice was muffled as she bent over and reached into a gigantic refrigerator.